Inclination Quotes - Page 18

• I have the disadvantage of not being sociable. Wall Street men are fond of company and sport. A man makes one hundred thousand dollars there and immediately buys a yacht, begins to race fast horses, and becomes a sport generally. My tastes lie in a different direction. When business hours are over I go home and spend the remainder of the day with my wife, my children, and books of my library. Every man has natural inclinations of his own. Mine are domestic. They are not calculated to make me particularly popular in Wall Street, and I cannot help that.

  Jay Gould

  Sports, Horse, Children

  "The Life and Legend of Jay Gould". Book by Maury Klein, 1986.

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• I have no sympathy whatever with those who would grudge our workmen and our common people the very highest acquisitions which their taste or their time or their inclination would lead them to realize.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Education, People, Acquisition

  William Hanna, Thomas Chalmers (1852). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D. LL.D.”, p.206

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• In a sense my whole life as a writer is trying to find structural ways, or formal ways, to permit that outflowing so it doesn't just look like crazy output. In other words, if it turns out that you can do a given voice, that's just kind of inclination. But then if you can find a way to put that voice in a story so that the voice serves a purpose, then I would say that's being a writer.

  George Saunders

  Crazy, Voice, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• When Im in town on Sundays, I sometimes go down to the Central Bar in the East Village to watch English football. But my natural inclination now is to get in the car with my wife and kids and get out of town.

  Joe Scarborough

  Football, Kids, Sunday

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• My age, my inclinations, are no longer what they were.

  Horace

  Age

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• If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Reading, Men

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.65

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• Almost every one has a predominant inclination, to which his other desires and affections submit, and which governs him, though perhaps with some intervals, though the whole course of his life.

  David Hume

  Desire, Affection, Submit

  David Hume, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord “Moral Philosophy”, Hackett Publishing

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• There is always a half-malicious curiosity amongst actors to witness the shortcomings of a novice. They invariably experience strong inclinations to prophesy failure.

  Anna Cora Mowatt

  Strong, Curiosity, Actors

  Anna Cora Mowatt, Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie (1854). “Autobiography of an Actress: Or, Eight Years on the Stage”, p.220

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• Many people with a wild desire to act prove failures on the stage, their inclinations are greater than their powers. Rarely is it the other way.

  Alec-Tweedie

  People, Desire, Actors

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• [W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.

  Countee Cullen

  White, People, Feelings

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• It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.

  Joseph Addison

  Vanity, Ill Will, Mind

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.675

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• Women see everything or nothing according to the inclination of their hearts. Love is their sole light.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Heart, Light

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• Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, and most virtuous inclination from weakness and a fear of being condemned.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Men, Weakness, Virtuous

  "Reflections and Maxims". Book by Luc de Clapiers, 1746.

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• It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Hard Work, Fate, Done

  Charlotte Bronte (2004). “Jane Eyre”, p.186, Variocity

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• Make a point never go clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination.

  George Berkeley

  Lying, Men, Odds

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• Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy; for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Perseverance, Men, Giving

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• Mastery is not a question of genetics of luck, but of following your natural inclinations and the deep desires that stirs you from within.

  Robert Greene

  Luck, Desire, Mastery

  Robert Greene (2012). “Mastery”, p.303, Profile Books

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• There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon.

  John Stuart Mill

  Strong, Average, Class

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.69, Cambridge University Press

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• In a way, all sociologists are akin to Marxists because of their inclination to settle everyone's accounts but their own.

  Raymond Aron

  Way, Settling, Marxist

  1971 Politics and History.

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• If it be the chief point of friendship to
  comply with a friends motions and inclinations,
  he possesses this in a eminent degree;
  he lies down when I sit, and walks when I walk,
  which is more than many good friends
  can pretend to do.

  Alexander Pope

  Lying, Good Friend, Degrees

  Alexander Pope, John Wilson Croker, Whitwell Elwin, William John Courthope (1871). “The Works of Alexander Pope: New Ed. Including Several Hundred Unpublished Letters, and Other New Materials, Collected in Part by John Wilson Croker. With Introd. and Notes by Whitwell Elwin”, p.87

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• Take steadily some one sin, which seems to stand out before thee, to root it out, by God's grace, and every fibre of it. Purpose strongly, by the grace and strength of God, wholly to sacrifice this sin or sinful inclination to the love of God, to spare it not, until thou leave of it none remaining, neither root nor branch.

  Edward Bouverie Pusey

  Sacrifice, Roots, Grace

  Edward Bouverie Pusey (1853). “Parochial sermons”, p.160

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• Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off, but the inclination vanishes when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set it.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Death, Running, Track

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• Duty is whatever opposes inclination.

  Mason Cooley

  Duty

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• Agreeable then to my present inclination, I formed the object of my own worship, which was no other than my own understanding.

  Sarah Fielding

  Education, Self, Vanity

  Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier (fl. 1753) (1754). “The cry: a new dramatic fable : in two volumes”, p.42

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• I had some short struggle in my mind whether I should resign my lover or my liberty, but this lasted not long. I found myself as free as air and could not bear the thought of putting myself in any man's power for life only from a present capricious inclination.

  Sarah Fielding

  Marriage, Women, Struggle

  Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier (fl. 1753) (1754). “The cry: a new dramatic fable : in two volumes”, p.80

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